The PyPy platform is really amazing.
I hope one day the we can use all the scientist Python libs on PyPy!
cffi (<a href="http://cffi.readthedocs.org/" rel="nofollow">http://cffi.readthedocs.org/</a>) makes writing FFI much easier and in more portable way then using python CAPI or clunky ctypes.
And now the STM - a remedy for the famous GIL.